Center & Other Research

Drinking & Problem Epidemiology in Blacks & Hispanics

Description:
This study involved a national probability sample of Blacks and Hispanics in 1994. The survey, as the one in 1984, was conducted together with a national survey of the U.S. population (n=2,000) conducted that same year. One of the aims of the 1994 survey was to allow for trends analysis in drinking patterns, problems, attitudes toward drinking and drunkenness in a comparative frame among whites, Blacks and Hispanics. This was the first time trends analysis were conducted on alcohol-related data on representative national samples of Blacks and Hispanics. Such analyses are specially important now that trends suggesting a decrease in alcohol consumption have been detected among whites but not among Blacks and Hispanics. New cross-sectional analyses on alcohol expectancies, attitudes toward drinking, reasons for drinking and recognition and views on alcohol policies in minority communities were also done. These analyses were aimed at covering several important gaps in the alcohol literature with Blacks and Hispanics, as follows: (a) description and testing of the factor structure of alcohol expectancy, attitudes toward drinking and reasons for drinking; (b) assessment of the relationship between expectancies, attitudes and reasons for drinking and drinking patterns; and (c) support for alcohol control policies and factors that underlie it. Taken together, these trends and cross-sectional analyses provided a major contribution to the study of alcohol problems among Blacks and Hispanics. Results assessed present levels of drinking and problems, as well as the sociocultural environment surrounding alcohol use behavior among Blacks and Hispanics. The knowledge generated by these findings may impact the development and implementation of prevention strategies to minimize heavy drinking and alcohol problems among these two ethnic groups in the U.S.